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Wanting to keep a child as a child for as long as possible is a luxury. There are a lot of places in the world where this is simply not a possibility, let alone the norm.
Parents in the US got it into their head at some point that because we lived in an advanced society (not a 3rd-world country), that they can attempt to shield children from becoming adult in any way, well into their teens. Today, there are tons of parents for whom the molly-coddling practices last into the early 20's as well, and some parents never outgrow their offspring's "child" phase. This practice is a luxury, but behaving any other way in America, as a parent, is treated as deviant or wrong.
Letting children know about sex is seen as sacrificing innocence, pushing them towards adulthood "sooner". Well, that's the way it's been working since humans existed. Children grow up- they always will- but attempting to keep them innocent by coddling them and shielding anything and everything that threatens to mature them, is your desire, and not historically natural. It used to be that people were married and starting families by their mid-to-late teens... "growing up" was important, not shunned like something filthy. Keeping kids innocent and child-like until 18 is a new concept for humans, not the norm.
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